Vincent Serracino - Week 1 SS1

The poem "Waking" by W.P. immediately demands your attention to the surreal cruelty in their life and in the world we are a part of. Upon reading the first stanza I thought that sudden rodent murder was a bizarre but effective device to grab my attention. It made me wonder about how what was coming next would connect back to this poor mouse and oh it did. 

I had no context on my first couple of read-throughs, but I could feel how W.P. must have been torn apart and suffered in ways I could only begin to imagine. Like the mouse, they were deeply betrayed and discarded. 

I noticed in the parallel they drew between the mice’s death and their being “Flung against [a] wall of conscience”(W.P.) that there was more than a connection about being disposed of but an underlying feeling of anger by the author. Their chain of questions for their betrayer and the multiple defenses of their humanity feel righteously accusatory and demanding justice. Their asking how their betrayer “keep[s] the same as [they] watch” W.P. brings to mind how people speak when invoking their own wrath over others.  

They feel anger for being seen as discardable and a target when they were clearly a long respected member amongst their colleagues. This realization of suddenly being an outsider to the revelation that you were always seen as some kind of other reminds me of a hallmark in the discrimination against Asian Americans. Without knowing the whole context, I could see how W.P. woke up to the racial prejudice around them, cleverly making self reference as a “ yellow-faced colleague,” connecting the fear they felt with the outward racial associations that people projected onto them. W.P. has clearly awoken, but will their betrayer?

Q: What happened to the people that W.P. was helping?

Sources: 

P, W. (n.d.). "Waking". Retrieved from https://canvas.ucdavis.edu/courses/392140/files/folder/Weekly Readings/Week1?preview=6305117

Image Source:

Crowder, S. B. (2015, March 24). "To Be Unaccepted". Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2015/03/24/essay-being-denied-tenure